The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which, in and of themselves, may also be inventions.
A person's mobile number has always been tied to their mobile phone due to mobile operator's network architecture where a subscriber identity module or subscriber identification module (SIM) card is equivalent to a mobile phone number. People would like to be ‘unchained’ from their mobile phone just as a person's email account can be accessed on any device that has Internet access.
Social networking and business networking influence the way people communicate. Because of the influence of social media on the way people communicate, there are many social networks being developed and used by users throughout the world. For example, Facebook®, MySpace®, Linkedin®, Google+®, Twitter®, Chatter®, WhatsApp and other social networks have been created and developed in response to the social media craze.
Conventional Customer Relations Management (CRM) systems generally provide a web-based customer communications between users and customers. Enterprises have long had to deal with different ways that its customers communicate with them (e.g., paper, voice, fax, email, IM, etc.) and could never really realize a process to collect and collate all of the communications channels' data into the enterprise CRM system. Voice communication is a particularly difficult form of communication to integrate within the CRM system and the introduction of Internet Protocol (IP) and mobile messaging services including SMS/MMS text messaging, and proprietary systems such as Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc., only compound the problem.
Enterprises have long had to deal with different ways that its customers communicate with them (e.g.—paper, voice, fax, email, IM, etc.) and could never really realize a way to collect and collate all of the communications channels' data into its CRM system. Voice communications and the introduction of IP and mobile messaging services from SMS/MMS to proprietary systems such as Facebook, WhatsApp, WeChat, etc., only compound the integration problem.
Previous attempts have only addressed a single communications channel such as voice only, email only, fax only, paper only, etc. The same challenges exist with a multitude of proprietary OTT services (Facebook, Instant Messenger, Viber, WeChat, etc.) as well as hybrid SS7/IP based SMS/MMS platforms. There appears to be a shift towards mobile messaging communication. Because of this shift toward mobile communications that is not primarily voice based, enterprise based CRM systems will require the ability to collect and collate all its users' and customers' mobile messaging communications in addition to email, IM and other IP based communications.